It is time for a dignified retirement and for Putin to vacate the Kremlin and make way for a younger, more able leader the way Boris Yeltsin did in 1999.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been Head of Government in India for less than half the time President Vladimir Vladimirov Putin has led the Russian Federation. Putin has been in charge of the Russian Federation throughout the years of the 21st century. Russia is a vast country with a land area spanning half of Europe and half of Asia. The people of Russia are known for their patriotism and devotion to hard work. They have stoically endured several periods of bleak times, as for example during the Great Patriotic War with Nazi Germany during 1941-45. Years before the war started, Stalin had been seeking an alliance with Britain and France, aware of the threat that Nazi Germany presented to the three and to Europe in general.
He had placed as his Commissar of Foreign Affairs, Maxim Litvinov, who had a British-born wife and who was Jewish by ancestry. Litvinov, with the backing of Stalin, sought ceaselessly to persuade London and Paris that the threat from Berlin called for a united front to defeat the Hitler menace. Those in power in London and Paris during the 1930s underestimated the Nazis and the fanatic determination of Hitler to defeat both of them in the process of conquering Europe. In order to be effective, Soviet troops would need to pass through Poland to reach the primary centres of military and industrial power of Germany, yet the Polish government refused such permission. To them it was Moscow that was the threat, not Berlin. In 1939, Poland paid a huge price in lives lost for such an error, being invaded and occupied by Nazi Germany on the false pretext that Polish forces had attacked first. Just before that invasion, Hitler had managed to secure a No War pact with the Soviet Union, where Stalin was by now convinced that there was little hope in his wish to come to an alliance with Britain and France against Germany.
He therefore replaced Litvinov with Vyacheslav Molotov, who was not Jewish in ancestry, and who was so loyal to Stalin that he worked at his desk uninterruptedly and seemingly calmly even after his wife had been arrested by the Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti (KGB). He was rewarded for his loyalty to Stalin by having his wife returned to him some months later at his doorstep, shaken but unharmed. In Germany, Hitler wanted to concentrate his forces against Poland and when plans and mobilisation was ready, Britain and France, and did not want the Soviet Union to intervene on their side. This desire was secured by the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact of 1939, shortly after which, Hitler invaded Poland, who paid the price for spurning earlier offers of partnership with Moscow. Millions of Poles were enslaved or killed during the occupation by Nazi Germany. After the war waged by Hitler on the Soviet Union began, Britain and the US immediately declared their alliance with the Soviets.
Hitler had got the mess of a two-front war he had avoided so far. Later, the US entered the war by the close of 1941 with the attack on Pearl Harbour by the Japanese naval forces under Hideki Tojo. Reckless as usual Hitler declared war on the US, thereby freeing President Franklin Delano Roosevelt from the Neutrality Act that had hampered his efforts at helping France and Britain thus far. Roosevelt assisted the Soviet Union with arms and essential supplies, ensuring that the Nazis could be held to a stalemate at the Stalingrad, Moscow and Leningrad fronts by the close of 1942. Soviet troops were instrumental in the defeat of the Nazi armies. After the war came the Cold War with the US and its European allies, who were alarmed at the expansion of Soviet influence in Eastern and Central Europe. Despite his initial errors such as not taking seriously information about the planned German attack, Stalin fought on fiercely until Germany was defeated in 1945 together with Japan. Such was the timbre of the dictator (or Vozhd) that he addressed troops in Red Square in December 1941 when German forces were just four miles away. Given its record in the 1939-45 war, it was expected in 2022 that the Russian Federation would speedily enter the gates of Kiev in 2022 and destroy the land crossing points between Ukraine and Poland, but Putin held back for fear of a war with the EU, something that Stalin would not have done. He would have understood that the EU would not go to war with Russia, even if Kiev were to be taken over. The Europeans respect power, and four years and more later, respect for and fear of the Russian Federation is being replaced in Europe by contempt, now that Ukraine under Zelenskyy could hold the vast country to a stalemate. What a change between the Putin of just a few years ago, in 2014, when he annexed the Crimea and both Donetsk and Lugansk provinces from the grip of Kiev. Or the Putin who vivisected two countries in Central Europe to ensure that Russian-speaking segments of the local populations would have a safer, more dignified life than under regimes controlled by non-Russians. The Ukraine Russia war had its origin two years before, when Russian-speaking Ukrainian citizens were reduced to the status of outcast by Kiev in 2012. It is clear from his performance on the job of battling Ukraine that 26 years have been too long for Putin to retain his initial drive and effectiveness. Prices are rising, as is war fatigue. The public do not see any visible endgame for the Ukraine conflict, and although Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is a maestro of foreign policy, his stance is dictated from the Kremlin, and it is a hesitant stance. Science and technology are beginning to lag behind China, a country that has risen in the same period that Russia has fallen in the geopolitical tables. Inflation is high, including a spike in petrol products, oddly. Youth are dissatisfied, and wish to leave the country. Putin was a welcome Head of Government after the shoddy Yeltsin period, when oligarchs were created and in effect created a government by and for their interests.
However, by now memories of the chaos of the Yeltsin years has receded, especially among the youth. Gen Z is restive, seeing no future in Russia under the present leadership. Russians are a proud people, and silently resent the fact that China is so much more important than Russia these days. Putin goes to Beijing, looking more and more like a satellite of Xi. The leering presence of Zelenskyy snug in the Presidential palace at Kiev is testimony to the loss of control of Russia under Putin of its surrounding areas. Central Europe is now much less responsive to the Kremlin than it was a decade earlier. It is time for a dignified retirement and for Putin to vacate the Kremlin and make way for a younger, more able leader the way Boris Yeltsin did in 1999. Time is not on the side of President Putin and it is time he acknowledges that by leaving his present post as Head of Government of the Russian Federation for the sake of the citizens of Russia that he ably served for a long while.
